Arrowroot starch

Bag of arrowroot starch

Description

A starch obtained from the tubers of the Maranta arundinacea plant native to Florida, the West Indies and Central America. Arrowroot starch is used as a Binder and Adhesive. In the mid 1850s, arrowroot starch was used as a binder in salted photographic papers. It produced a bright image with a good density range and high resolution.

See Arrowroot paper.

Arrowroot starch
200x, visible

Arrowroot starch
200x, polarized

Synonyms and Related Terms

maranta; Maranta arundinacea; arrow-root (Br.); fécule de marante (Fr.); almidón de arruruz (Esp.); almidón de raiz de flecha (Esp.)

Risks

• Susceptible to biodeterioration.
• Dried films become brittle with age
• Alpha Resources: SDS

Physical and Chemical Properties

• Swellable in hot water.
• Reacts with a iodine/potassium iodide solution to give a positive purple color

Resources and Citations

• G.S.Brady, Materials Handbook, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1971 Comment: p. 768

• Richard S. Lewis, Hawley's Condensed Chemical Dictionary, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 10th ed., 1993

• Book and Paper Group, Paper Conservation Catalog, AIC, 1984, 1989

• Random House, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Grammercy Book, New York, 1997

• The American Heritage Dictionary or Encarta, via Microsoft Bookshelf 98, Microsoft Corp., 1998

• Art and Architecture Thesaurus Online, http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/aat/, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, 2000

• Wikipedia at http://www.wikipedia.com Comment: arrowroot